[HN Gopher] Design For Reliability
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Design For Reliability
Author : bryanrasmussen
Score : 66 points
Date : 2021-03-14 06:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (semiengineering.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (semiengineering.com)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm glad to see this. Not sure if anyone's listening, though.
| Reliability and robustness seem to have fallen by the wayside, in
| a rush for money.
|
| One of my pet peeves, is Bluetooth devices that crap out, after a
| year.
|
| I've gone through quite a few expensive headsets, while my cheap
| exercise headsets have lasted for many years.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| There's an ebb and flow to these things. If new technology is
| making my headset obsolete every year, designing a 10-year
| headset makes no sense. Once headset technology settles down
| and people realize they keep buying the same thing over and
| over, then the customer starts to value reliability more.
| Unfortunately customer behavior updating to the reality that
| underlying technology of a product has stopped evolving lags by
| a few years, but it happens.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Like flatbed scanners.
|
| Most are still USB 2, and the resolution is still 600 X 600
| (like it was ten years ago). I have an old HP that I got a
| decade ago, that basically still has the same specs as their
| current flagship.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > There's an ebb and flow to these things. If new technology
| is making my headset obsolete every year, designing a 10-year
| headset makes no sense. Once headset technology settles down
| and people realize they keep buying the same thing over and
| over, then the customer starts to value reliability more.
| Unfortunately customer behavior updating to the reality that
| underlying technology of a product has stopped evolving lags
| by a few years, but it happens.
|
| However, business _really like_ the income that comes from
| regular tech refreshes. Once technology stops making their
| products obsolete after N years, they 'll often start
| designing them to reduce reliability (e.g. going for cheap
| parts that will fail faster) or incorporating planned
| obsolescence features.
|
| IIRC, this is what's happened to consumer printers and many
| types of home appliances.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I don't think this is deliberate, but it seems that one of the
| big things that has changed as a result of the shortening of
| consumer product development cycles is that it sort of
| eliminates any feedback loop that might incentivize
| manufacturers to engineer for reliability. Why build a device
| that's designed to last for 10 years, when consumers are going
| to buy themselves a new one every year or two, regardless of
| whether the old one is still functional and meeting their
| needs?
| taxicabjesus wrote:
| Recently my father had wifi problems at his house. I thought the
| smart thermostat had a firmware update that was flawed, resulting
| in it not staying on the network for more than a day. After a few
| months of this all the other devices started losing their wifi
| connections too. I replaced the Ubiquiti access point with a
| router flashed with ddwrt [0], and everything now works fine.
| Maybe a neighbor's wifi network started overlapping on the
| channel, but I think it most likely the access point just died.
| It was mounted where it got sun every morning, maybe the heat
| cycles accelerated the AP's aging?
|
| I bought a parts laptop off ebay to fix the broken hinge on the
| HP laptop I bought in the summer of 2012. After getting my laptop
| working, I figured the parts laptop would probably work if I
| bought a replacement "DC IN Power Jack". Glued the broken hinge
| back together, bought the jack off ebay, and _poof_ "now I have
| two laptops". I put the second one on a network cable and used it
| as a media server.
|
| In recent months I've basically stopped using this laptop because
| the wifi is so unreliable. The donor laptop's wifi seems to be
| unreliable too. My 2012-2014 era Toshiba laptop usually works,
| but every so often its wifi craps out on me too.
|
| What's your experience with aging WiFi chips? The problem with
| trying to fix things is if you don't have the experience, tools,
| aptitude or a collection parts, fixing something is often a
| mission-impossible. It's usually easier to throw out the "broken
| laptop", when all the device actually needs is a replaceable
| part. (I'm going to ifixit to look at the repairability score
| before buying another laptop.)
|
| [0] https://openwrt.org/meta/infobox/broadcom_wifi - bought the
| router at a thrift store for $2, on account of it being listed as
| supported by ddwrt. ddwrt uses proprietary drivers and supports
| some routers with broadcom chips.
| buescher wrote:
| Chips - most chips - almost never fail from the aging
| mechanisms described in the article. The folks interviewed are
| not kidding when they are talking about applications with
| extended lifetimes past ten years and only seeing these issues
| at 28nm and below. In your typical laptop or whatever something
| else breaks first anyway. There is a lot else that can break in
| any piece of consumer electronics.
| buescher wrote:
| It's wild to see electromigration and temperature-driven aging
| come back as a concern at today's dense process nodes. Pecht's
| landmark work in the early nineties mostly debunked the old
| handbook models that were based on those causes of failure. Most
| electronics will still fail due to overstress or mechanical
| fatigue from vibration or temperature cycling, of course, but
| it's really interesting to see these concerns return.
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(page generated 2021-03-15 23:02 UTC)